When we hear about air disasters and imagine what might have led to the fateful moment, it is usually technical problems, a sudden flock of birds, stormy weather, or perhaps a hijacking that comes to mind, but certainly not differences in character between nations, which played a huge role in the downing of Korean Air Flight 801 in 1997 (and many other similar tragedies).
How an individual communicates is only partly determined by their nature, but what the people to which they belong think about hierarchy and rules is also of great importance, because it will greatly limit what they will allow themselves in terms of directness of communication, even in an emergency. The aforementioned plane crash is also attributed by many, largely based on the black box footage, to the fact that the Korean second officer and flight engineer were unwilling/unable to communicate with the captain in a sufficiently assertive manner to avoid trouble, due to the culturally encoded high respect for hierarchical relationships.
Geert Hofstede’s research on the cultural dimensions of each nation is a great help in getting a better understanding of the subject. Hofstede’s system now distinguishes 6 dimensions to capture differences: indicators of power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation and indulgence.
Going back to the title, one of the interesting things when looking at Hungary’s figures (https://www.hofstede-insights.com/fi/product/compare-countries/) is uncertainty avoidance: the higher the number, the more citizens demand rules and trust established procedures and offices. We score a massive 82 on a scale of 100 (by comparison, the British score 35 and the Danes 23!), with only our masculinity score higher – 88 – meaning that Hungarian society focuses much more on performance, success and competition and considers them as a measure of value than aspects related to quality of life, solidarity and caring for others (compared to 16 for the Danes, for example).
On the other hand, it is revealing that “indulgence” describing the prestige of life – i.e. the extent to which a nation considers a well-lived life to be a natural and desirable part of existence – is a rather weak 31 in our country, compared to 71 in Australia or 63 in South Africa. But don’t panic: if we want to change, the first step is self-awareness and the ability to point out where the system is flawed – from there, all we need is a good dose of awareness and work to ensure that it a higher score we get in the latter category in a few years’.
